The Pauley Principle: winemaking

Welcome to The Pauley Principle!

The Pauli Principle, named for Wolfgang Pauli, deals with atoms and electron-sharing that results in new, stronger bonds. Think 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen, a shared delectable (!) electron and VOILA! Water!

Similarly, when you prepare whole food to share with family and friends, especially foods you've grown, something amazing happens. Meals become tastier and healthier. Your soul, not just your stomach, becomes fulfilled. You live life more abundantly as a result. During a shared meal, the bonds that people create grow stronger and become something new: GREATER than the sum of the parts! I give you The Pauley Principle.

Showing posts with label winemaking. Show all posts

Monday, January 9, 2012

A Canadian Winemaker and Her Lasting Impact

watermelon and pear wines in the secondary fermenters

Hello, Carboys!

poor photo re-take but that was me at 6

The summer I turned six, I was lucky to meet a woman who seemed ageless. Her name was Jerry, and she became a close friend to my mother. Every summer thereafter for many years, I would return with my family to the country store in Ontario that Jerry and her husband owned, where we would pick up supplies for our continuing homesteading adventure on Cloud Lake. And on every trip to the store, Jerry and Mom would catch up over a glass of wine.

On one return visit, I remarked that Jerry never seemed to age. She laughed and said, "Why, child, that's because I'm pickled, eh!" Then she turned to my mother and winked.

Mom explained to me later that Jerry not only made wine, she probably imbibed a little more than she should. Still, I was fascinated and the fascination lingered so that, for a few years now, I have tried making several varieties of wine myself.

Because of my fear of over-drinking, I carefully limit my wine consumption to no more than one glass a day. Similarly, I don't want to poison anybody so I proceed with caution, following only trusted recipes and using only the most highly-recommended utensils. Just lately, I've tried other fruits besides grapes, and to my surprise the experiment has proven awesome! Blackberry and plum have been especially delightful!

With a bumper crop of watermelons this past summer, Chris convinced me to try making use of this fruit in winemaking. Then he brought me a friend's pears! Where will this end? Although very grateful, I reminded him that I was really a fan of the grape wines because of their link to heart health and I planned to try canned grape pulp next since our grape crop had been so poor at the same time that the watermelons were thriving. Before I could muster up the courage to spend the money on it, Chris surprised me with grape pulp!


The grape pulp is next to a decoration a friend of mine made from a wine bottle we shared.

Winemaking is a slow process when you don't add chemicals that would speed it up. The old-fashioned method allows the flavors to fully develop while keeping the final product pure. I like that. When you control the ingredients, the end result is pure delight. The anticipation and delayed gratification you experience after the fruit juice spends almost a year in fermentation makes it a pleasingly complex hobby.

So now, Carboys, move on over and just wait your turn! It's time for my attention to turn to my Primary Fermenter again and my first love for winemaking! Bring on the grapes!

Making the wine and sharing it with friends and family is "WOW!" for me. A perfect pleasure! I don't sell it, so if you want to enjoy a glass with me, we'll need to get together and do some catching up ourselves!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Vitis Grapes!

Just as the season for planting was coming to an end, WOW! A surprising find! After searching locally, online and in catalogs, and after asking several people, Chris finally found our vitis grapes, supposedly good for our soil type and climate. This variety is the Edelweiss grape, yellow-green when ripe, a mild, sweet grape.

Vitis grapes are specially cultivated for wine. The flavor they hold depends heavily on the soil the grapes are grown in as well as climate and rainfall. Since rainfall is an uncontrolled variable, harvests will be different from year to year. Another experiment in winemaking!

In 90 degree heat, Chris prepared the new bed for planting and added a 40-foot arbor to the vineyard. Then, to beat the oncoming storm, he planted at night by truck light. Funny, he enjoys a good glass of wine about once or twice a week. Grapevines require months of growing in good conditions then harvesting at just the right time for winemaking, which adds a few more months. This is a fine example of delayed gratification. All gardening and farming is! If it all falls into place, we hope to share a bottle with friends and family--in about a year--and then I think Chris will feel that it was worth the hard work! Hmmm!

Give Yourself the Fast Food Alternative: 1, 2, 3 makes 4 and More

For many people, late night ballgames, church, work and other events make fast food too convenient to resist, but what's in that stuff? I can't begin to answer. Big franchises such as Taco Bell say the 63% or so that isn't beef is made up of "the secret ingredient". If we consume their food, don't we have a right to know what that secret is? And more importantly, what's it doing to our bodies? My plan is worth the effort since meals eaten at home with the family benefit our physical and mental health.

Here's an alternative and my answer to Rachael Ray's A Week in a Day. I call it 1,2, 3 Makes 4 and More. On the fifth day, Friday, make a quick and easy pizza.
In one day, you can make a roast, a hearty soup, and a one-dish casserole to get you through most of the work week.
Meal 1: the roast with salad and a veggie.
Meal 2: the soup served with warm bread or in a bread bowl.
Meal 3: the casserole with a salad.
Meal 4: soup from Meal 2 served with sandwiches using the roast, Meal 1.
Meal 5: homemade pizza.

Plan meals and shop for it. Then take a few hours to prepare the entrees ahead. Start with a roast seasoned to taste. I'm talking real meat. While that's slow cooking, start chopping veggies and meat for a good, hearty soup, one that will be a meal in itself. Get it started and simmering away and then begin a one-pot meal that takes a little more attention.

This week my plan is Day 1, a slow roasted ham with salad and mashed potatoes; Day 2, minestrone; and Day 3, shepherd's pie. I'm making mashed potatoes for two days (meals 1 and 3) at one time on my cooking day. The fourth meal will be ham sandwiches with minestrone. Salads and breads round out the meals for the week. Fruits with cheese make a quick and good-for-you dessert. A truly delicious recipe for shepherd's pie is in my blog.

Be good to you. Be good to others. On days 6 and 7, change it up by going out, having a pot luck with friends and family or grilling out. Remember, live your life abundantly.

About Venison

Venison should taste really delicious! No kidding. It is my favorite meat, except for crab.

Some things to consider though:
*If you wouldn't think of eating a bull, then don't eat a deer that had huge antlers or was in rut. I don't. It affects the flavor and tenderness of the meat.
*Replace the deer fat with beef fat for your ground meat for an 80/20 ratio. Deer fat tends to be slightly bitter and leaves that thick coating in your mouth that, although edible, is not palatable.
*For roasts, sear with butter and olive oil. These impart a wonderful flavor.
*For sausage, use pork shoulder, at a ration of about 3 parts ground venison with 1 part ground pork shoulder.
*Venison by nature is a lean red meat. A good young deer processed properly will give you many delicious meals.
*Anything you would do with beef, except ribs, you can do with venison. Look for my recipe for Shepherd's Pie. Use either beef or venison. Enjoy, share, and live abundantly.

Plan Now for Maple Syrup

Maple syrup is cooked down from sap that you gather from sugar maple trees. There are no other ingredients, not even water. And it's incredibly good. On the market, maple syrups will often have corn syrup, gluten, color and other additives which can stretch profitability and decrease the steaming time required. Since it takes 35-45 gallons of the thin slightly sweet sap to make a gallon of pure maple syrup, doing it the old-fashioned way takes time but the result is pure YUM!

If you have the opportunity to tap into maple trees and decide you'd like to give this a try, plan ahead. If you steam off the sap inside your kitchen, it can strip your wall-paper! Been there, done that, at our old farmhouse. If you cook it down outside with a gas turkey fryer, the cost can end up being around $8 a pint. We began cooking over a wood fire a few years ago, using a tripod and kettle. Oh, and a large firewood supply. Whatever method you choose, proceed slowly and with caution.

Gather your supplies. We use food safe plastic jugs, buckets, and little water line spouts. Maple syrup production houses will collect into stainless steel vats using long water lines but we simply gather the jugs, pour into buckets and bring it to the kettle twice daily. I buy little pint jugs to store it in. Very fresh, very pure. Start tapping the trees when daytime temperatures are going to be above freezing but nights are still very cold. In Ohio, the sap will be running fast sometime in February.

Try my cousin Stephanie Krupla's recipe for Sticky Bun Tea Ring and you'll want to search for maple trees you can tap into yourself!